So your telling me that joe six pack needs a 3Ghz proc and a Raden 9700pro to do word?????????? hahaha dood stfu. If you really did own a gaming site then u would know how many users are on it. And you would see and most people with computers do play games. its not all user but most. I mean, i dont know a computer owner that doesnt play games. Even my OLD ass Parents plays them, even if it is solitare!
You have the VALUE PC area: These people buy AMD or Celeron boxes. They are concerned primarily with price. They want something cheap. I'd say this is around 25% of the market. Is this where the opteron is targeted? No.
You have the Mainstream PC sector. These people typically buy 2.4 ghz-ish PC's and don't really know or care how fast the video cards are, as long as it does what they want and is somewhat viable a year or two down the road. This is what the games industry targets when developing games. This is around 70% of the market. Is this where the opteron is targeted? No.
Then you have the enthusiast sector. These people buy the biggest and the best. They account for MAYBE 2-5% of PC sales. Of that 2-5%, most of those people will go to Dell and order up an Inspiron 8250, and max it out. For every person on these forums who builds their own, there's 100-200 more on delltalk's forums that don't. Is this where the Opteron is targeted? I don't think so.
UK2 - Counter-Strike servers: daliy have about 2000 people playing on them
And how many people surfing the web at that time who don't care about games?
Blizzard.net - diablo 2: had 20,000 and way over of upward 90,000, people playing on them, this is not to mention the OPEN SOURCE SINGLE player internet mod with diablo2!!
Ok, you've got 2 games, and you're up to around 100,000 people... out of an internet population of BILLIONS....
im sure i can log on to other sites and produce more numbers for u. but i think u get my point!!
Only if your point is "Gaming doesn't drive the computing market".
haha.. gaming doesnt drive the market!!! its probably the most influentcial software there is!
If that were true, then EVERY system sold would be a beast. But that's simply not the case.
now i know your gonna go into "oh well bussiness need the power!!" stfu.
Eh? What do businesses need with 3ghz machines? I'm sitting at my desk, a Network Engineer for the largest financial firm in the world (Citigroup). I hold the rank of Asst. Vice President. I manage several multi-million dollar projects. My desktop machine at work? A P3 600mhz with a Matrox G200 graphics card. All our machines firmwide are Intel-based, like most other fortune 500 companies.
Our servers are another story, but like most big businesses we would never stray from Intel-based hardware, particularly in production systems. Their track record is far too rock solid to trust anyone else. Companies like Dell, Compaq, HP and the like have spent years perfecting their server hardware suites. No one is going to trust this opteron business in the big business world where seconds == $millions. So is the opteron targeted at this market? I hope not. It'll be the end of that product line.
another example: My brother works for a large committee in the government! all he does is use Word, exel, access, and the NET. like i said b4, u dont need the latest or greatest to do this stuff! but they upgraded. why, because the speed is out there!! where did this speed come from, gamin.
So do they run AMD hardware? Is the opteron targeted here? I don't think so!
and if u mention programs like CAD etc. Most 3d developers probably use RISC, SPARC, or others, which out performs these pentium class chips
That's not exactly a huge market segment, now is it?

Is the opteron going to find its niche here?? If it is, there won't be much in the way of profits, since I don't know of any big CAD corporations that have a need for 242,000 Opteron-based CAD machines.
Wishful thinking will only take you so far, kid...
-Karl
http://www.weckstrom.com